When Love Comes by Leigh Greenwood Read Free Book Online

down. “Onecan’t tell it by hearing you sing, but I suspect you could use more sleep as well.”
    Having put on the brake and looped the reins over the handle, Amanda let him help her down. “I do get tired once in a while, but I can quit as soon as the first calves from our bull go to market. Gary wants us to sell them as yearlings, but that wouldn’t bring in a quarter of what we’ll get when the steers are four or five.”
    If they still owned the ranch then.
    The front door opened to reveal Mrs. Liscomb. “Amanda, come in immediately. You know the night air isn’t good for you.”
    Amanda smiled at Broc. “She forgets it takes me twenty minutes to drive home in the night air. It gets a little wearing when I’m treated as if I’m still in pigtails.”
    Broc found it impossible to imagine Amanda in pigtails, but he was certain she had been adorable.
    “Thanks for seeing me home. I’m sorry about telling Corby you were an old friend, but I can’t stand him fussing over me, and I didn’t want to stay until Gary could leave.”
    “Who normally sees you home?”
    “Gary, but the regular bartender was sick tonight, so he had no one to take over for him.”
    Gary hadn’t seemed concerned his sister might have to go home alone, but that was none of Broc’s business. He just had to collect the debt, hand the money over to the judge, and go home. He had no intention of coming to this part of Texas again.
    “I’m surprised Eddie hasn’t insisted on riding with you.”
    “He has tried,” Amanda said with a laugh, “but I won’t let him.”
    “Amanda, come in immediately,” her mother called. “Have you no concern for my health? I can’t stand in this open doorway forever.”
    “I’ve got to go. Thanks for helping with the bull and seeing me home. If you ever come through here again, you will be an old friend. Good night.”
    Broc waited until Amanda had disappeared inside before turning back to the buggy. He doubted she’d claim him as a friend after he told her about the debt. He climbed into the buggy, took the reins, and released the brake. Then he turned the buggy around and headed back down the lane toward town. He’d return tomorrow. It was probably best to time his arrival with dinner. That way he was likely to find the whole family at home.
    “What were you doing with that man?” Mrs. Liscomb’s lips were compressed in disapproval.
    Amanda unwound the scarf from around her head. “He offered to escort me home.”
    “Why didn’t Gary come with you?”
    “Gil is sick, so Gary had to work the bar alone.”
    “Then Corby should have brought you.”
    “You know he won’t leave the saloon as long as it’s open.”
    “Wasn’t there anyone else?”
    “Who would you choose? Bodie? Nick? Barney?”
    “Stop,” her mother ordered impatiently. “You know I don’t permit myself to recognize men who frequent saloons. And you needn’t be rude like Gary and say I married a saloon owner. I married the owner of a respectable plantation. It wasn’t your father’s fault that the war ruined us.”
    The growth in the cattle industry had turned their little town into a supply stop for cattle being trailed north, leaving her father prosperous enough to buy the Lazy T. Unfortunately nothing had been able to turn her mother from a Mississippi belle whose ambition had been to preside over her own plantation home into a Texas rancher’s wife willing to do what needed to be done to survive.
    “It didn’t ruin us. We’re doing what we have to in order to survive. I can drive a wagon, ride a horse, and handle a rope,” Amanda said. “If I have to, I will help with the branding and turning young bulls into steers.”
    “Amanda!” Her name wasn’t spoken. It was shrieked.
    “We live on a cattle ranch in Texas, Mother. This is not, and never will be, Mississippi.”
    “I’m painfully aware of that.”
    “But you haven’t tried to make the best of things. Gary, Eddie, and I work on this ranch